Panda Security, The Cloud Security Company, today announced that Panda Cloud Antivirus Free Edition, the world’s fastest growing cloud-based antivirus, has been ranked first in performance tests ran by the prestigious AV-Test.org independent lab. The institute evaluated the protection, repair, usability and performance impact of 23 home user and 8 corporate antivirus products under Windows 7 in January and February 2012

To see a graph of the test results, please visit: http://prensa.pandasecurity.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/av-test-201202.jpg

Both Panda’s free antivirus solution and Panda Internet Security 2012 have been certified by AV-Test.org with an overall score of 14.5. Panda Cloud Antivirus Free Edition was the best free antivirus software, outperforming multiple paid solutions and achieving top rankings in usability (5.5 out of 6 points). In terms of accuracy, Panda Cloud Antivirus recorded only one false positive –a legitimate file erroneously tagged as malware– out of the more than 500,000 test files, whereas other products tested averaged six detections. In addition, it obtained an excellent score in protection (5 points), well above the average for other solutions.

AV-Test evaluations measure how much each solution impacts overall system performance while still delivering good levels of protection. Of all products tested, Panda Cloud Antivirus Free Edition had the least impact, registering 40 percent below average for other products analyzed. The full report is available at: http://www.av-test.org/en/tests/test-reports/

Panda Cloud Antivirus Free Edition 1.5.1, the software version tested by AV-Test and launched in June 2011, includes performance improvements as well as new functionality requested by Panda Security’s user community. Since Cloud Antivirus’ initial release in 2009 as the first free ‘in the cloud’ security service for home users, millions of PC users around the world have benefitted from its award-winning protection and light footprint. This low resource usage is a primary benefit of Collective Intelligence, Panda’s proprietary technology for automatically collecting and processing millions of malware samples in the cloud instead of locally on the user’s PC, as is the case with traditionally architected antivirus solutions. The current version is 1.5.2. For more information, please visit: http://blog.cloudantivirus.com/2012/02/27/panda-cloud-ant...

About Panda SecurityFounded in 1990, Panda Security is the world’s leading provider of cloud-based security solutions, with products available in more than 23 languages and millions of users located in 195 countries around the World. Panda Security was the first IT security company to harness the power of cloud computing with its Collective Intelligence technology. This innovative security model can automatically analyze and classify thousands of new malware samples every day, guaranteeing corporate customers and home users the most effective protection against Internet threats with minimum impact on system performance. Panda Security has 61 offices throughout the globe with US headquarters in Florida and European headquarters in Spain.Panda Security collaborates with Special Olympics, WWF and Invest for Children as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility policy. For more information, visit http://www.pandasecurity.com/ or our press site http://press.pandasecurity.com/.